It looks like British Health Minister Earl Howe has put egg over the faces of the British media regarding their claims that Dr Andrew Wakefield is to blame for recent UK outbreaks of measles. But they do not know it yet.

In one small area of one small region of the UK there have recently been relatively few, in historic terms, UK cases of measles but the UK media have been making a meal of it. So guys have some egg with that meal and lick it off.

The people to blame are the Department of Health and specifically Professor David Salisbury, Director of Immunisation. Health Minister Earl Howe confirmed in Parliament on 26th February 2013 the correct position in a written answer in response to a question about whether recent increases in the number of cases of measles were linked to a reduction in the uptake of MMR vaccinations ten years ago.

But the media have been claiming the outbreaks are the result of a scare asserted to have been caused by Andrew Wakefield by publishing a paper over 14 years ago. The paper published in the Lancet in February 1998 recorded that parents and some doctors associated the MMR vaccine with causing autism. But contradictingly in The Guardian, Alex Hannaford claimed recently no one remembers who Dr Andrew Wakefield is.

Minister Howe stated in relation to recent cases in 2012 that the highest proportion occurred in those under five years of age and that [CHS emphasis added]:

a “minority of cases in 2012 can be attributed to the fall in coverage with MMR vaccine in the early part of this century …” and that “… MMR vaccination uptake is currently at historically high levels“

What this tells us and what it in fact means is that the Department of Health is presiding over the ultimate legacy of their MMR vaccination campaigns: “vaccination failure“. Measles vaccine failure is not new and will be likely to increase over the years. In the USA in 1985-86, 55% of all cases of measles and 72% of cases in 5-19 year olds were appropriately vaccinated: Orenstein WA et al, Worldwide Measles Prevention; Isr J Med Sci 1994;30:469-481.

The MMR vaccine is failing but the Department of Health and especially Professor Salisbury want instead to deflect blame to Dr Andrew Wakefield and historical events of over 14 years ago which most people it seems have forgotten about.

That the Department of Health should have kept the single vaccines until the position was clarified would have been the wiser course. The mandatory legal position under English and EU law is to apply the precautionary principle. The DoH instead oversaw the immediate removal of all single vaccines. They have also failed to take any steps to develop an effective treatment for measles for those children who will develop measles despite being vaccinated.

There have historically been measles outbreaks in highly vaccinated populations. For example:

Secondary measles-vaccine failures are more common than was more previously thought, particularly among individuals vaccinated in early life, long ago, and among re-vaccinees. Waning immunity – even among individuals vaccinated after 15 months of age, without the boosting effect of natural infections should be considered a relevant possibility in future planning of vaccination against measles.

The ultimate scandal in Century 21 is that we have no effective treatment for measles – no measles pill – nor for other basic childhood diseases. A very serious consequence is that children in the third world have died in their millions over the years despite the vaccines but if the treatments existed we stood a chance of saving those lives. And of course we have no treatment to offer those first world children who contract measles despite having had the vaccination.

This is all because the drug industry is just too busy making money selling all the allergy and other drugs to treat the chronic long term immune system conditions caused by vaccines like asthma, lupus, diabetes, autism and a long long list and because we have individuals like Professor David Salisbury in the UK ignoring the writing on the wall and all because political quasi-charitable organisations like United Nations organisation UNICEF is so riven with drug company interests that it doles out the vaccines like there was no tomorrow – and unfortunately for many of the third world children concerned – because of that approach – there isn’t one.

With the UK’s national media in a feeding frenzy whipped up by the UK’s Department of Health claiming the current outbreaks of relatively few measles cases are all the fault of Dr Andrew Wakefield, the BBC appears to have slipped up and confirmed that the main plank of the General Medical Council’s case against Dr Wakefield and his two colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital, London, England in 1998 has bitten the dust.

The main plank of the GMC’s case was that there was only one study carried out by Dr Wakefield and his colleagues on the “Lancet 12” children, that it did not have ethics approval and that it was the study reported in February 1998 in the UK’s medical journal “The Lancet”.

Whilst the BBC is meant to be independent and unbiased as a news source, it has been propping up the UK Government and Health Department’s official line for many years over the MMR/autism issue not being caused by vaccines and that Dr Wakefield was wrong.

But who in fact is wrong? If you cannot get your facts right over something pretty major then how can you have your facts right on that issue?

In a report yesterday it appears to have allowed a significant chink in the UK Government’s position. The BBC confirms there were in fact two studies carried out: one was for the Legal Aid Board but it was not the one the GMC panel Chaired by Dr Surendra Kumar decided it was.

The three defendant doctors claimed there were two studies: that the Lancet study was not the Legal Aid Board study and that the Lancet study had a different ethical approval – contrary to the GMC’s allegations.

So why has the BBC not covered this. It is important news. But here we see them including these significant facts as an aside in a different news report. This shows however that the BBC’s health journalists are fully aware of the facts and have a grasp of these important details but do not report their importance and significance to the British public who pay directly to fund the BBC. It is defrauding the British public – they are not getting what they pay vast millions of pounds sterling for.

Further, the complainant to the GMC, Mr Brian Deer, who had been paid by Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times to get “a big story” about the MMR vaccine, withheld crucial lost documents from the GMC investigation, the GMC’s lawyers, the Defendant doctor’s lawyers and everyone else including all the world’s media. The documents date back many years showing that all the three doctors subjected to the GMC investigation did in fact have and were routinely operating under ethics approval 162/95 and not ethics approval 172/96 – which was for a different study never carried out which Dr Kumar and his GMC panel decided was carried out.

Additionally Dr Kumar’s position as GMC panel Chairman demonstrates it was a “Kangaroo Court“. Barely two months after the decision to strike Dr Wakefield from the medical register, Dr Kumar was publicly calling for compulsory MMR vaccination.

Compulsory MMR vaccination is an approach described in 2008 as “stalinist” by the BMA chairman Dr Hamish Meldrum who also said forcing parents to have their children innoculated was “morally and ethically dubious”: No jabs, no school says Labour MPBBC 11 May 2008. Dr Kumar’s strongly held views on MMR vaccination were never disclosed and raised the question of whether Dr Kumar should have been debarred just from sitting on the panel under the Nolan Principles regulating standards in public life in the UK.

Here is what the BBC reported [CHS emphasis added]:

The General Medical Council found Dr Wakefield guilty of serious professional misconduct in 2010 and he was struck off the medical register. It did not investigate whether his findings were right or wrong but focused on the way he carried out his research.

Dr Wakefield’s study considered whether there was a link between the three-in-one MMR vaccine and autism and bowel disease.

It focused on tests carried out on 12 children who had been referred to hospital for gastrointestinal problems.

Dr Wakefield was also paid to carry out another study at the same time to find out if parents who claimed their children were damaged by the MMR vaccine had a case. Some children were involved in both studies.”

And on CHS we have shown in numerous reports with how numerous times the causation position that MMR vaccine causes autistic conditions has been proven time and again and that there is a considerable body of medical and scientific evidence to that effect. Here are just a few examples: